WOM
word of mouth
Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend
Christoffer Carlsson
Leo Junker is a disgraced
cop, framed and blamed
for something he didn’t do
in order to allow his former
mentor, Charles Levin, to get
away with murder – literally. Now Levin is
dead, apparently murdered, and Junker feels the
need to find out what happened to Levin and
to himself. To do this, he will need to throw
himself back into the Serious Crime Unit and
the dark world of vice that almost ended his
career. He will also have to work closely with
a local officer who seems to know more about
him than he knows about her, and she doesn’t
like him very much at all.
At Levin’s house, Tove Waltersson is sifting
through evidence. Nursing her own grief after
the death a year ago of her brother, Markus, in
a botched undercover police operation, she tries
to piece together the bits of Levin’s life that will
help to solve the cr ime. A missing computer,
a photograph of Levin with a woman and a
young girl, a witness who saw a car at the back
of the house, and Levin himself, always in the
middle of things both when her brother died
and earlier, when the journalist Cats Falck
went missing in the 1980s while investigating
shipments of armaments from Sweden to East
Germany. The clues lead Tove deeper into the
tangled web of Levin’s life. To solve this crime
she will have to get the heart of a 40-year-old
mystery, one that may still be dangerous
enough to get both her and Junker killed for
their trouble.
Christoffer Carlsson, an academic in
criminology, brings a gritty sense of realism
to his writing. Grounded in the events
surrounding the disappearance of real-life
journalist Cats Falck, Carlsson’s story offers
an alter native view to claims associated with
weapon smuggling from Sweden into other
communist countries of Eastern Europe
through East Ger many. Some aspects of the
narrative require knowledge of relationships
established between characters in the previous
‘Leo Junker’ novels. But the links can be
re-established by the diligent reader who
perseveres with this engaging story until
the end.
★★★★ Scribe $32.99
Reviewed by David Johnson
GOODREADINGMAGAZINE.COM.AU
GOOD READING MARCH 2017
42
The Seventh Plague
James Rollins
Sigma Force is back.
Commander Gray Pierce
and his team have been
assigned to find missing
Egyptologist Dr Safia al-Maaz
after she is attacked in the British Museum.
She was overseeing the autopsy of her
colleague, Professor Harold McCabe, who was
researching the 10 biblical plagues of Moses
when he vanished in the desert. His return
to civilisation was marked by two key factors:
those who provided care for him on his return
died of a fast-acting plague, and his own body
appears to have been partially mummified –
while he was still alive.
Meanwhile, McCabe’s daughter, Jane,
and her father’s young protégé, Derek, try
desperately to piece together parts of a
puzzle to the plagues of Egypt. Links
between her father’s death and a secret
society from the past seem to indicate that
the world is on the brink of a new era that
may well unleash a terr ifying biological
weapon, a plague like nothing seen since
Pharaonic Egypt.
The energy in James Rollins’s writing
is palpable. He draws readers in to the
action from the outset, creating enough
twists and turns in the events to maintain
a level of intensity that carr ies through to
the final page.
★★★★ HarperCollins $29.99
Reviewed by David Johnson
CRIME / THRILLER
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RG